


What Beautiful Things

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24187546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Jasper and Monty accompany Octavia on a trading mission to the clan of the Plains Riders. Old games are resurrected, wind storms arise, a bed is shared.
Relationships: Monty Green/Jasper Jordan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	What Beautiful Things

**Author's Note:**

> Written for anonymous on tumblr, who requested Jonty + only one bed.
> 
> Only one bed is my favorite trope and Jonty is my favorite pairing so I wrote this, and then I made it SUPER self-indulgent.
> 
> Like most of my "canon" stories this is set in a canon-divergent future, several years after the events of the first season. Seasons 1-3 happened roughly like in the show, and then instead of praimfaya and all that, everyone (including the Earth) just decided to be peaceful and chill instead, and heal, and be happy. 
> 
> On a related note, "Grounders are just into killing and war and stuff" is a boring take on the post-apoc world and I do NOT accept it. So you'll find none of it here.

At the turn of the season, as the last frost breaks and the first cold rains turn the ground to mud, Octavia sets off on a trading expedition, and takes Jasper with her. At the last moment, he convinces Monty to come, too.

Monty cannot himself explain why, on this occasion and no previous occasions, he accepts the invitation. The village's solar panels are glitching again, not holding their charge through the long and gloomy, sunless weeks; and the expedition to the territory of the Plains Riders will take several days. There is work for him to do here and he is needed. Yet he finds himself standing in the doorway of his cabin, just the same, watching Jasper load the back of the Rover with supplies, while Octavia gently feeds her horse a carrot out of the palm of her hand. The road has turned wet and thick with muck, and raindrops fall with persistent, dreary drips from the bare limbs of the trees onto his roof, his windowsill, down into the mud that splatters shoes and pant legs, which smells rich like water-burdened earth. All of the cabins seem too close to one another; the path ahead of the Rover will curve too soon and take Jasper and Octavia out of sight. So perhaps Jasper had a point, when he said that Monty's life was becoming too narrow and too cramped.

Jasper catches him watching, as he slams the back door shut. For a moment, Monty thinks that he might grin, or tease, or joke. But his smile is forgiving and warm. "Last call," he says, and tilts his head toward the Rover, his hands in his back pockets and his shoulders lopsided and shrugging up toward his ears. "You sure you don't—"

"Yeah.” He raps his knuckles against the doorframe, as if for luck. “Just let me pack my bag."

*

Monty drives, while Jasper sits in the front seat. Octavia takes Helios. Sometimes she rides side by side with them, sometimes falls behind, and sometimes, as when another patch of rain and pause of sun leaves them stalled out on the road, she cantors on ahead. In the evenings, they find each other again. They build a fire and eat dinner, then fall asleep, wrapped up in blankets, among their supplies in the back of the Rover, avoiding the still-cold and ever-damp ground.

On the second day, the rain clears and the sky turns a light and open gray, with wisps of nearly invisible, pale gray clouds. Jasper rolls the passenger side window down and sticks his arm out, letting it sail as if buoyed by the currents of air. Out past the forest the driving is easier. No villages, no settlements, no encampments from here to the horizon. Enough to make them both giddy. Monty presses his foot down against the gas, and Jasper pulls himself half-out of the open window and yells, with wild abandon and euphoria, and Monty feels a wide freedom in the center of himself—as if he himself had screamed with unrestrained, instinctive joy.

Jasper throws himself down in the passenger seat again, inhales deep as if he were out of breath, lets himself go limp against the seat back. They are still sailing.

"Hey, Monty—what's the word of the day?"

And Monty laughs, only a quick and half-swallowed sound, and shakes his head. A short glance: he can see that Jasper is watching him, head turned lazily to the side, his expression not solemn but expectant and curious. They haven't had a word of the day since before the Sky Box. (Word of the day on the afternoon they were arrested: incarceration. That was the last one, the last one he remembers.) So much time has passed since then that, at first, the question rattles him, as if his laughter were the roughly broken outbreak of his nerves. He looks to Jasper again. Trying to figure out if he is serious.

He seems to be, and Monty's hands tighten briefly on the wheel.

"Apogee," he says, at last, to the windshield.

As soon as he says it, he wonders at the tenor of the silence, like words caught almost-said in someone's throat.

Next to him, Jasper takes a deep breath and lets it out, slowly, audibly. He has his hand outside the window again, letting the air slip and slide through his fingers.

"We _are_ apogee," he answers.

His voice is quiet, cracked and yearning and threatening to flicker away in the wind, and Monty has to swallow hard around the knot in his throat. Jasper is swinging across the river, finally brave. And Monty is coming after him, flying like the spacewalkers on their thin tethers outside the ship, utterly at the mercy of distance and speed and the goodness of the Earth, utterly free. As it always should have been.

The air cool and clear, blowing through the open Rover windows and his eyes fixed on the open space ahead, the glint of river in the distance, Octavia and her horse a small flag at the horizon, leading the way.

*

The Plains Riders are nomadic and yet their homes have an unexpected air of permanence, so that Monty finds it hard to believe that, weeks from now, they will have vanished from this space as if they had never been. Their thick-cloth tents remind him of the dropship camp. He feels all at once like he has returned home, but also as if he has walked past the edge of the world: both the landscape and the people are so new to him. These Grounders are not like Trikru; they are unfamiliar in their long, dark coats, with their long hair and their jewelry of striking silver and gold.

A man with dark hair and a baritone voice arrives to meet them at the edge of the settlement, and Octavia dismounts and begins to speak to him in his tongue. Monty makes a move to open the door of the Rover, but Jasper stops him with a hand to his arm and a quick shake of his head.

"What?" Monty whispers. "Dangerous?"

"No." He gestures with his chin toward the scene beyond the windshield: Octavia with her arms crossed and her hip cocked, the man with the thinnest, unreadable smile on his lips. He holds out his hand, elbow bent and palm out, and she grasps it. "Just let them have their moment."

Already the grey afternoon is settling into dusk, the sky beyond the windshield shot through with streaks of rose-gold and muted pink.

Dinner is held in the largest of the tents, at a long wooden table, crowded with bowls and plates and cups, loud with conversation and laughter. The children across from them want to practice their English on Monty. He can barely hear them over the noise of the room, but still he manages to pick up a few new words: the names of the spicy soup and fresh meat that he's eating, the correct pronunciation of the clan's own name. He shows the kids a magic trick, and they clap for him wildly. Next to him, Jasper reaches out and squeezes his arm tight, and smiles.

Later, they find themselves out at the edge of the temporary settlement, all of the tents behind them, and ahead, only a field of tall grasses waving gently in the night wind and the most expansive sky Monty has ever seen from the ground. He's never breathed in air quite like this either: utterly clear, sharp but not with winter cold, a pure air that he takes deep and slow into his lungs. He tilts his head back and stares at the bright shining notes of the stars. The view from this angle looks almost like that from the Ark. But the near-silence, the distant chatter of the Grounder village at his back; the rustling of the grass; every low, subtle disturbance so distinctly of the Earth and not of a machine, is nothing like the Ark, and he feels the tiniest pinpricks rising up along his skin.

When he glances to his right, he sees that Jasper is watching him. He has his hands in his pockets and a slight hint of smile on his face, like an expression he's forgotten: the grown-up version of the goofy look he used to get when they were high. Like maybe he's been watching Monty for a long time.

"It's beautiful out here, isn't it?" he asks.

Monty nods. "Almost makes me wish we could stay out here forever."

"I know. Makes me wish—we'd landed out here."

It's funny, but Monty has long thought of the forest as their home—more than space ever was. The spot on the vast globe they were destined for all along. Now this thought, never voiced in so many words, seems silly, as silly as thoughts of destiny and fate always are.

Jasper tells him about the Plains Riders, how they survive on hunting and trade with the other clans, how they trade not only in meat and skins but in beautiful crafts and jewelry and fabrics. How they are always creating, and always giving what they create away. They wander; they settle down and then move and re-settle again. They are at ease with impermanence. Out here, there wasn't as much damage from the war, and they treat the remnants of what was left behind only as markers, features of the landscape as they know it now: as if their ancestors and their creations were as much a part of the Earth as are the grasses and the flowers and the dirt.

"How do you know all of this?" Monty asks. All around them, a more forceful wind picks up, still soft and warm, and the patterns of the stars above shift behind giant, drifting, brown-gray clouds.

"I've been out here a few times," Jasper answers, shrugging. "Asked some questions. What's the point of wandering around on this massive, strange planet, if I'm not going to learn about it, anyway?"

Monty nods. "I guess that's true." He thinks he might say something more, precisely what he isn't sure—he isn't made, he thinks, for moments like these—but before he can, Jasper edges a little closer, and bumps his arm up against Monty's arm.

"Hey," he says. "New game. On what part of the planet would you rather watch the sky?"

Used to be that watching the sky was the best thing they ever did. Smoked some of his parents' plants, felt just how high above the Earth they were, found new patterns in the stars.

"This part," he says, "right here. Pretty good view, I think."

"Agreed," Jasper answers. He tilts his head all the way back. Monty follows the line of his throat, traces with his eyes the still-thin hollows of Jasper's face. Never has he looked so familiar, Monty thinks, and yet at the same time so new.

*

Jasper's tent is cozy and small, a place of refuge from the howling threat of the night winds. Several lanterns, placed at intervals, cast a fine and delicate glow against the white cloth walls. Monty finds himself thinking again of the dropship tents, the first tiny space he and Jasper called their own and only their own, where he lay awake long hours in the dark, wrapped up in a blanket against the seeping chill of autumn night, and listened to the sound of his own foot scratching against the nylon side of the tent. Listened, just as carefully, to Jasper, in the cot across from him, as he tossed and turned and mumbled low, slurred noises in his sleep.

In this tent, there is only one bed.

"Sorry about that," Jasper says, as he fastens the door of the tent closed. "They weren't expecting a third person, or they would have—"

"It's fine." He sits down tentatively on the corner of the bed, runs his hand across the furs that have been carefully draped on top. It's more than big enough for two: a simple pallet bed, wide and low, set down close above the ground. He has to tilt his head back to catch Jasper's eye. "Not like we haven't slept in the same bed before."

"Yeah. That was a while ago, though."

A long while. Back on the Ark, sleepovers at the Jordans' quarters. Huddled together under the blankets, pretending to be asleep when Jasper's dad poked his head in through the door, and then as soon as he was gone, shushing and laughing at each other for every broken giggle and swallowed sound.

Jasper turns his back to him but does not otherwise affect modesty as he undresses and gets ready for bed. He's thinner now even than he was in adolescence, noticeably lean, no longer lanky in a half-grown way. This is his body now; this is who he is: a man whose vertebrae show when he bends, whose shoulder blades are sharp beneath his skin.

Monty only realizes he’s staring when Jasper faces him again, still brushing strands of hair out of his face. Then he feels a belated rush of warmth against his cheeks. "You planning on sitting there all night?" Jasper asks him, and he rolls his eyes, and stands up again and turns away.

"Go float yourself."

"Just a question."

No rancor to his voice though, nor to Monty's. He listens to the sound of the fur blankets pulled back, to Jasper sliding in beneath them, into bed. He wonders if Jasper is watching him, in turn.

But when he puts his bag away and looks behind him again, he sees that Jasper is already curled on his side, facing Monty's half of the bed, only a tuft of hair and a bit of nose and the edges of his hands visible beneath the blanket. He flips it back and glances around the tent. "Can you kill the lights?"

"Oh—yeah. Sure."

He crosses from one lantern to the next, putting each flame out, all too aware of the hard-packed dirt beneath the bare soles of his feet. The last lantern is just next to his side of the bed. He sits down first, then extinguishes the final light.

Through the pale walls of the tent, the vaguest of shadows still loom. The sounds of his own body, as he lies down on his back and pulls the blanket up to his chest, are drowned out by the heavy, wild gusts of wind. Still, he can hear Jasper's small movements against the sheets, the close and quiet way he rearranges himself, the long, tired exhale of his breath.

"Goodnight," Jasper says.

And Monty echoes, "Goodnight." But he isn't sleepy. He doesn't even close his eyes, only stares up at the ceiling, imagining patterns in the layers of black on black above.

Jasper was right, he thinks: that was a while ago, when they would race each other to bed, as soon as Mr. Jordan told them it was time to sleep, and jump up onto the old Ark mattress and feel it bounce and creak beneath their weight. They were giddy then, from their shared and private joke, their muted plans to stay up late, their secret that they thought was so well-kept. Remembering those nights now, he's sure the Jordans knew. He and Jasper were allowed, like a gift, their late nights and their delighted secrets, their belief in their own intelligence and stealth.

This could be another life, now, and Jasper almost another person. Monty closes his eyes as tightly as he can and tries to bring himself back to those days of pure, exhilarating innocence, when they could do and be and become anyone still, get away with everything still. They have been trapped and set free so many times since. And yet here they are again, after all that, sleeping side by side.

Here he is again, lying awake and wondering if Jasper is sleeping. Like he did in the Sky Box, like he did in their dropship camp tent.

"Hey Monty?"

He smiles, breathes out an unexpected sigh of relief. The way it bubbles up inside him feels like laughter.

"Yeah?"

"You awake?"

He does laugh, a little, at that. Then he turns on his side and searches out Jasper's gaze, the glow of the whites of his eyes in the dark.

"Yeah," he answers. "I think so."

"I know it's late," Jasper says, low, "but I'm really not tired at all."

"Neither am I."

Jasper blinks, twice. His eyes flick and search across Monty's face.

"You know what I'm thinking about?"

Monty smiles. The wind picks up again, crashing against the cloth walls, shaking the small space. He moves a little closer and pulls the furs up and around their shoulders, so they are safe and warm in their bed.

"I can't begin to guess."

"That's no fun of you. I'm thinking about the buffalo."

"The buffalo?" The word feels strange and oddly shaped on his tongue, all the more awkward for the way he cannot quite stop himself from laughing around it. Jasper's expression is serious, though, almost solemn as he nods. "Those are—wait, don't tell me—I remember this—"

"An animal."

"Unfair hint!"

He slides his arm, snake-like, across the sheets, and pokes at Jasper's side. Jasper curls in around himself, against the touch. But as soon as he relaxes and straightens again, he settles in closer, and Monty feels the heat of his body trapped beneath the furs, the exhale of his breath—only a thin barrier of space remains between them now. Monty settles his head at the edge of his pillow.

"I do remember," he says again. "We read about them in that history book—they were brown and kind of shaggy. Like a dog."

"They were bigger than dogs," Jasper answers. "I think." Then: "That's how I pictured them."

The sizes of things, Monty's always thought, are the hardest to capture: imagining Earth to scale, when they could only see it in its greatness and distance from above, was nearly impossible, so in his mind houses towered and skyscrapers dwindled, and people and animals roamed like giants past tiny rows of trees, leaned down to smell flowers that grew to nearly human heights. He knew he was wrong. But his mind wouldn't cooperate. He pictures now, the image of the buffalo from the book, as if it were small enough to roam the narrow valley of the rumpled sheets between them.

"Why are you thinking about the buffalo?" he asks.

Jasper shrugs, and rolls onto his back, and looks up. His shoulder bumps against Monty's pillow. His face looks thin, his cheekbones high and sharp, but the expression around his eyes is fond and soft. "Because they used to live here," he says. "And I was thinking, wouldn't it be cool if they still did? What if we came outside tomorrow, and there were just..." He lifts his arms briefly, waves them through the air. Monty imagines himself capturing one, how he might briefly hold Jasper's hand between his palms. "There were just buffalo everywhere? Humongous, house-sized buffalo."

"They _definitely_ weren't house-sized."

Jasper flicks his gaze up, meets Monty's eye with a narrow and subtly judgmental look. "Radiation, Monty," he says.

"Ah. Right."

He tries to picture it, just as Jasper described: a herd of wild beasts, roaming the Grounders' village streets. Feeling the shudder of their tent walls in the wind and hearing the nearly human wail of sound outside, sensing everything invisible and mysterious at night in the vast, open middle of the world—he almost believes. He could believe. All manner of strange and unusual things may be possible, and everything he knows and knows so well may be only the smallest fragment of what is to be known.

He pulls himself up onto his elbow, looks for a moment down at Jasper's face, and then closes his eyes, so Jasper can see that he is thinking.

"Wouldn't that be scary?" he asks, when he opens them again. He means, in part, a stampede of irradiated monsters outside their tent would be frightening, like the violent tremors of the wind are frightening, like the memory of all the miles that stretch between them and their home is frightening. But also, he means, _are you still afraid?_

Not knowing how to ask the rest, he settles his hand, instead, at the center of Jasper's chest. How comforting it would be to feel the beating of his heart. All he perceives is the working of Jasper’s lungs, the hardness of bone.

"No," he answers, quietly. "Not the way I'm picturing it."

"More like... gentle giants," Monty asks, but the words don't come out as a question. Rather as a story they are telling each other.

Jasper nods. "What beautiful things," he wonders, so quietly that Monty has to lean in to hear, "have we not seen yet in the world?"

And then he lifts Monty's hand in his hand and presses a kiss, fleeting but insistent, against the heel of his palm. Lets it drop again and closes his eyes. He's tilted his chin up and Monty sees him again standing among the tall, wafting grasses, the long line of his neck, his gaze peering up at the sky.

Monty lets himself settle again, on the mattress, his head only half on his pillow, and the side of his face squashed against Jasper's shoulder. He pulls the blanket up around them once more. Then his hand finds Jasper's hand again and squeezes it tight.

"We still have time, you know," he says. "Lots of time."

"I know." He yawns, so wide that his jaw pops, which makes Monty want to yawn as well. "Are you tired yet?"

"No." A half-lie, a half-truth. Jasper's rolling onto his side again, so now their foreheads touch, and their noses bump against each other when they try to speak. He has nowhere to put his arm except around Jasper, but that feels all right. Feels like a comfort to him, reminding him that he is safe and warm and content within himself, and wonderfully unafraid.

"Me neither," Jasper says. "Want to play never have I ever? I'll go first."

"All right."

His eyes are closed. He can feel Jasper's voice, just as truly as he hears it, a low murmur like the beginning of a dream.

"Never have I ever—kissed my best friend."

"I—"

 _Such a line_ , he thinks, and yet he was going to answer _I can fix that_ , before he feels the slight, warm press of Jasper's lips against his, a stumbling, sweet, blind kiss in the dark.

He kisses back, just as tentative at first—but they know each other well, have learned and re-learned each other again and again, so every bit of newfound closeness only feels like coming home.

*

During the night, Monty drifts, and turns, and wanders—flying through wild winds of dreams. And when he wakes, he finds that he has landed half on top of Jasper, tangled in the blankets, with his ear pressed against Jasper’s chest. He can hear the rhythmic, comforting beat of his heart.

At first, he’s sure that Jasper must still be asleep, before he notices the carding motion of fingers through his hair. He pretends he has not woken yet. He lies very still, and thinks about falling asleep like this again, thinks about returning home to the two-room log cabin in the shelter of the pines, and sleeping like this again, of moments of laziness through the cool and rainy season, waiting for the fullness of spring to bloom.

What an indulgence he might allow himself.

“We should get up,” Jasper murmurs, then, his voice still rough with sleep.

Monty groans, and pulls himself up onto his elbow, feels the way Jasper’s arm glides down along his back as it falls down to the mattress, how the furs catch along his torso as they settle at his waist. “That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had,” he says.

He knows Jasper’s face well, but he’s never seen it like this, bleary-eyed and wan with sleep, with sleepiness not yet shaken, yet warm and soft and adoring still, as he looks up at Monty’s face. “Sweet talker,” he says.

He reaches up and passes his thumb across Monty’s bottom lip.

Octavia will come looking for them soon: there to remind them that it’s time to wake up, time for breakfast, for the official business of trade. Time to begin another day. But for a few more moments, they linger in the aftermath of evening, pull the blankets up around them and indulge in slow kisses, and the illusion that the whole world exists only for them.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! You can find a moodboard for this fic on my tumblr [@kinetic-elaboration](https://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/618128536907202560/what-beautiful-things-jaspermonty-4k-rated-g-for).


End file.
